>> we're at the conservative political action conference talking with author mark joseph about his next upcoming book. please tell us what it's titled. >> wild car the promise and perils of sarah palin. >> and tell us a bit about the book and how you came up with the idea. >> sure, i wrote it during the '08 campaign and continued to write it since then. my publishers didn't think it would get out in time for the campaign so it gave me a chance to update it over the last two years, but, you know, it's really an overview of her life and politics and since then, of course. >> so with all the books that have come out about her since '08, what do you think is going to be new in yours that we haven't heard from before? >> yeah, i think my book has a chapter on her faith that i think is unique among the other books. specifically, what i think is significant it's the closest that somebody coming from a pentecostal background sort of the wing of christianity has

come to this kind of high office and i think that there are ramifications that are interesting and that i explored this time book. >> did she assist in the book or did she participate? >> no, no. it's independent. >> thank you very much. >> noel webster at the age of 25 has this bestseller and he's very brash and he always thinks he knows sometimes and sometimes he really does. in 1785 he decides what's wrong with america and he was spot-on. the problem, he says, is that under the articles of confederation, the federal government didn't have enough power. so he writes this pamphlet called skechers of american policy and when webster has an idea, he does something. and he takes it to mount vernon and he takes it to george washington. and washington was not a college guy. now, webster was a yale man. madison was a princeton man. john adams was a harvard man.

washington wasn't a college guy. he's very impressed by webster. he said that's a very interesting idea. and he's a great delegator and so he says i'll give it to mr. madison as soon as possible. he gives it to madison and webster's pamphlet becomes instrumental in the drafting of the constitution. and then in 1787, webster's at the constitutional convention, again these are the from us gump moments are evolving to move and shaker movements. in 1787 he's at the constitutional convention. as soon as washington arrives, the first thing he does is knock on webster's door. he's washington's policy wonk. he's not a delegate. he's there as a journalist and then the so-called convention man realizes talents and right after the convention they ask him to draft a pamphlet in support of the constitution. he does that and historians have compared that pamphlet to the federalist papers and actually may well have been more influential because webster's

pamphlet was circulated throughout the entire country and it was ready -- it was published right after the convention as opposed to the federalist papers which were circulated mostly in new york. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> up next, the author talks about growing up in the 1950s as the son of cuban immigrants and his subsequent life as a writer. we're live from the 2011 "chicago tribune" printers row literary festival. ..

not permitted. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. if there is time that the end for questions we ask you to use the microphone in the middle of the room so the whole viewing audience can hear your question. if you like to watch this program again our coverage will be aired again tonight at 11:00 p.m.. please welcome carolyn curiel and oscar hijuelos, author of "thoughts without cigarettes". [applause] >> thank you. >> we are thrilled to be here today. those of you who know oscar hijuelos know him best from one of his novels which won a pulitzer prize, the first for

latino writer. he has had many milestones since then, has written the most beautiful fiction and now has written about himself in a nonfiction way. oscar hijuelos, thrilled that you are here. why now? why a memoir now? >> there is a short answer and a long answer. the long answer is in my first novel which was called our house in the last world, i talked about the influence on my life when i was coming up and call our house in the last world, that came down to this. i went through some difficulty as a child. i was separated from my family for a year because of illness and i went through a period wed

having been interest in the culture and language i found myself suddenly immersed in american culture and language. as my mother would say i went into the hospital speaking spanish and came out speaking english and so my return, even though i knew my family loved me and i could understand spanish and communicate in certain ways with them, i stopped speaking it easily without any psychological uptightne uptightness. these are notions i put it to my first novel. than six years later, i published "the mambo kings play songs of love" which was an explosive celebration of my cuban routes and music and involved so many fantasies and realities that i grew up with,

people would look at me, blonde, fair skin, very new york in his demeanor and ask how on earth does that happen and i would have to explain and lot of people have thought that "the mambo kings play songs of love" was my first novel so i found myself explaining myself again and again, explaining just what i was about with each new book. people are curious. how do you write this book about your upbringing and other related issues to latinos? so in a way "thoughts without cigarettes" is a response to all these people who have asked me these questions over the years. how did you come about as a human being and get these crazy ideas for these books? the short answer is the irs.

>> which you had a run in with. >> not really. yes i did, as a matter of fact. that i put that in the memoir? >> funny how memoirs become confessionals. >> before we go on and we move in and out of serious tone and talk about many wonderful things i want you to know, trying to undermine anyone i am speaking with for the sake of a cheap laugh. >> i appreciate that too. the mention spanish and you write interestingly about your mother and your father but your mother quite a strong-willed person who never quite entirely learned english. read an excerpt here about you and her and some others. >> sounds like something i have

been dying to do all day. it is crazy writing a book. would you agree? when you are writing them you inhabit such an intimate space it is like you are having a conversation with yourself and conversations with people you have always known and somehow it is almost as if you are in a confessional but when it is all down on paper and someone actually printed it becomes public. >> we are outing you. >> this is the first time i have read this allowed. this scene takes place after -- it is pretty self-explanatory. you would think a child in such close proximity to so loquacious and opinionated a woman would

have picked up a piece of that lost mother tongue again through constant exposure. but that is just what should have happened. the simple truth is she never spoke to me but directed her tirades or aphorisms as 4 stories at me. my mother might have gently prodded ease the spanish language out of me or at the very least gone over the kinds of exercises that most cuban mothers might with their children like the rolling of the ares or repetition of tongue twisters -- i am having trouble with it now or starting from scratch, keeping me -- teaching me when things were called or how the spanish alphabet worked

out. in my case gently cajoling me to speak more spanish day by day. who knows how my feelings about refusing to speak it might have changed? whatever the reasons, that sort of patience, organization, just not part of the nature. given the more immediate concerns, years later, i don't know why you didn't want to learn as if that was something that was offered and i now wish he had been more demanding about my speaking spanish my guess is i would still find ways of pushing that language away. i like that piece. i can believe i wrote it. >> the book is packed with these

real insights that surely in reflection produce along view of a childhood that was quite troubled. >> i would say so. the most interesting thing about writing this is when you are doing fiction about, quote, your life, you can add -- with intervening thoughts, symbology and language and somehow it is buffeted. as i was writing this more and more i realized i had been raised having gone through a major drama which was to be separated from my home for a year. >> because of illness. >> the irony is that which separated me from my, quote, humanness and the language came from a disease that i grew up thinking of as the cuban disease because are attracted it when i

was in cuba when i first fell ill but psychologically i have or parents of -- i love the language i want to be close to but on the other hand hadn't you just been burned by it? interestingly enough i had never read as aloud before. i heard a word in spanish but could register if in an english. i wonder what that means. is there a doctor in the house? >> or ailing west. so t . so the book is about identity. if you were to big -- give short answers? >> are have always been a loner

and take deep pride ini have al and take deep pride in my cuban routes, always even when i was shellshocked. cubans would come to the house and the shellshocked because my parents were darker than i was. >> as opposed to? >> i had an irish great great grandfather named o'connor who emigrated to cuba on a ship in the 1820s and married a descendant named conception. i always wanted to write a book about conception o'connor. there are blunts and fair skinned people and relatives in my family and so forth but in my upbringing my brother's nickname

was pinky but he spoke better spanish and use to get beat up by latinos and white guys. in the context of where i grew up which was new york in the 50s and 60s the race thing was pretty pronounced. last night i was in washington and ran into a puerto ricans woman who actually went to the same high school i did and she said you went there? how come you didn't get beat up all time? it was mostly black and latino. i don't know. i use to sculpt a lot. >> it was a rough neighborhood in the shadow of columbia university. >> interestingly enough, i did grow up in the town, most of the parents i knew, my friend's parents were working-class

folks, blue collar jobs, etc. but quite an interesting neighborhoods. we were on the cusp of harlem. to listen to music and ca james brown act was the ticket. you also have access to downtown and a university ambiance. i recall being very aware of books for example, going by bookstores on broadway and being fascinated by the prospect of going inside but couldn't bring myself to do that for many years because i thought it was for a different kind of person, a different class, better educated class. on the other hand my mother who did love books but used to collect them as decorative objects almost and since we live in the university neighborhood and because of that we sometimes

come across carton's of books left behind by college students under stairwells. so i kind of read the book that came into the house. stuff like agriculture development in the midwest, 1954. we had one half volume of oliver twist. nice bold pages but only half -- that kind of thing. it was an interesting neighborhood. part of new york when it was quite a different place when it was only about -- you didn't need a lot of money to live there. people like st. minstrels and i remember a truck pulling up, and i came up after all that passed and there were also gains. >> i was really taken aback by the close calls you had and some

of the path your friends took. some of them did not end up so well. >> no. unfortunately. if you grow up in my neighborhood and you were dumb enough to take a shortcut through the projects, to save yourself five minutes, dumped a couple times when it was pretty rough, i would get jumped quite a bit but you get used to it after a while it grows on you. but aside from that, ironically when i was a kid in thaw hospital for so long, you submitted blood transfusions and blood being tested in the eagles, in my neighborhood where a lot of teenagers became her when addicts, my teenage years coincided with a moment in new

york history when drugs started coming in big time. to make a very long story short i developed a phobia, never began to think about doing that -- going that route. some of these things that seemed so troublesome to me were protective. >> your brother ran into a situation of his own and ended up having to leave home pretty abruptly. >> interestingly enough he had a girlfriend whose family were police, police officers and brothers all and i think they objected to his intimacy with their sisters so he ended up leaving town and joining the air force. that is in the book not as an invasion of any privacy but more

or less that he was left home when he was 17 and i was 10 years old and suddenly i was in household by myself with my mother and father contending with all these issues of language and other kinds of stresses. >> not exactly laid bare in the first novel that you wrote, the parallel to those characters pretty sharply seen by your family. >> they picked up the book and -- i am not sure my mother could read english well enough to understand everything i had written. >> that leads us to the next -- >> i am glad i gave you -- which one is this? of day. how long am i reading it? >> as long as you want.

>> okay. my older brother for what it is worth made no bones about telling me my mother had been upset by the book as if she could read it. but she could not bear any passages about pop drinking and on top of the ball had gotten a lot of stuff wrong. and that my portrayal of family friends like olga were offensive and i had no business describing her or someone like her as the kind of in glorious lot of who would problem around in a negligee and reveal her fabulous figure in our living room as i was growing up. you feel offended by that. in this end i believed him and took to skulking of my block. i did a lot of skulking in those days whenever i visited my mother. worries about running into any of the folks i had betrayed i had gotten ducking behind the

car coming out of my mother's building but she saw me. come over a year, she ordered. i did. wire you avoiding me? won't bite you. i know. there is something you should hear, she said. she with her curls hairdo and intensely dark features the personal i read your book and i will tell you that i loved it. and she flashed a smile. i don't even remember the next line. and she flashed me a sweet, to thawy smile. and thank you for putting me in it. you got me right. i had more or less describe the way she had been as a cuban bombshell who left men

breathless. she did chastise me about other things. you were too hard on your mother. i don't blame you, she said. she could be difficult but you were still too hard on her. she did not mention my pop the she must have been thinking about him as well. as i went by her on my way to see my mother who appeared out at me from behind the venetian blinds, olga gave me a kiss on the cheek. her final appraisal, we are proud of view. >> that is wonderful. this gives a wonderful piece of the humanity in your family. it is almost painful, the memory of your dad. there is a beautiful section of the book and our will let you

catch your breath. >> is there any more about the that is okay. >> you talk about what your father did not teach you. >> many things. my brother and i have discussed the notion that we somehow came up in this world without much guidance. wasn't anything that -- any lack of guidance that was done on purpose i don't think. my parents, immigrants of that generation who were working hard to get by, to teach us. information is power as they say.

as long as i can remember, my mother was absolutely confounded by the system. any time we got legal notices, my father was no -- whenever he knew he did not impart. >> what do they teach you? you have this almost mystical connection to your father seemingly at the moment he passes away. you feel a very odd pain that seems to mimic his. you feel his specter in your room. >> it is a very emotional issue for me but you used the term humanity. my father grew up on farms in

cuba and came to the united states in his late 20ss and came on to a new world. what he brought with him was this incredibly -- i don't know if there is an equivalent in other cultures. a courtly planeness -- a lot of class and kindness. i recall him for his gentle nature and work ethic. did he teach me how to drive our car? did he teach me how to swim? did he teach me how to rumba? that instructive relationship with either him or my mother. i felt a deep connection, he was very cuban.

i will tell you an anecdote that is not in the book. when i was growing up, in my 20s i became more and more conscious of something i used to hear a lot tea and from cubans. they would say to me you don't look particularly cuban. i could never understand it because even low i am fair and what i had hair blond, i looked aloud like my father. to me he was the ultimate cuban. for years i wondered how could it be that if i resembled my father, how did he, the ultimate cuban, how could that be? why is it that he always looked cuban?

he never looked cuban. the perceptions, or self delusion, basically putting them in perspective and prioritizing what the truth might be. and opinions and juggling to make it coherent enough for someone else to get what you are trying to convey. >> he died on the job. >> yes. he worked at the bill more hotel in the 40s and had two jobs for most of his life in new york but not to belabor the hardship of all that, but he was working a job one night and local faculty, university faculty restaurant in

butler hall, literally a block away from where i grew up. when he wasn't feeling well, cigarettes would make me feel better. and while he was doing that he collapsed. in the memoir i mentioned a fact that among the effects that came home where some cigarettes and wanting to commune with him at a couple now and then. very strange but at the time almost seem like part of a ritual. >> those incredible influences in my life, you make what some would say is the sharp right turn towards the writing life and how does that happen? >> i asked myself that every day. and high school i was a pretty good student.

i did well in the exams but hardly ever showed up because my school was pretty rough. i am giving you the long story. i basically pass all my courses, bought an academic diploma and began an odyssey -- subway schools in new york city. i worked for macy's department store for year. that is an outtake. when i was in school a very nice professor in the bronx, some sort of essay. remember the two words that were not clever or great.

freely frolicking. you really have something here and it was the first time anyone was ever so complementary. i used to sing around town and if you heard me sing and you would understand why no one ever complemented me. it was the first time i felt good but never thought i would be a creative writer. sort of reading more books. i love the theater. i have not lady friend who was an actress and used to go to theater all the time and started riding very naturalistic plays when sam shepard and those guys were happening. sort of writing about my family. i am not sure about the dialogue, but that let me into trying to write fiction and once

i attempted that i had the incredible luck of writers in the day. there in her -- they encouraged me to write, being nice to me. on the other hand, something about the process was fulfilling and nurturing, it was taking the question i had about myself and putting them into a container space eventually. the beauty of that, isa this tooth young folks or older folks, i was in an old age home once and it is student who was 107 years old was just starting

to write. >> never too late. >> never too late. if you have a strong emotion or memory about something get it down on paper because in five years or six years it could turn the hair. i didn't realize that when i started writing i'm glad i did because a lot of my emotions which were very raw ended up keeping me going even when i had myself about. >> so you talk about teaching writing because you are teaching at duke university and you don't have students in that class 107 years old. but they are at the point you were when you entered college but in a more privileged setting. how do you relate to them? what do you want them to take away from your class? >> and was very lucky to have

someone like donald ball or for that matter susan saw on tag, what they call word people, a word man. i am a word man. i look at the language and i try to see what is happening with a young writer, what they do best and what they do worse. i tried to steer them away from cliches but it is a different situation now. i don't understand the internet water -- world. i don't understand why anyone would want to be plugged into one of those things all day. i don't get it. to me what i see, kids walking with notebooks and all this, you can't go for an hour without seeing someone with all this and i think they're being plugged into some alien intelligence from outer space that is messing with their brains and exerting on some level true mind control

because their whole frame of reference is this internet cyberof world where you can get books on line and don't haline o a library, information easily gone without hard work by not putting that down. this is the way the future is going to be, but the process of writing which makes everything so pretty because they have instant spell check and instant thesaurus makes itself look good and i try to disavow them of the notion that because the paragraph looks good on a page that it is good. it has to have heart and be about something that is meaningful. so i try to treat them as seriously as i am capable. >> how large a class? >> are taught them what i would

call -- trying to remember. constructing narrative is one of the courses that i taught. ahead too many kids in it. i had 17 and the ideal number is 10. people say i have been -- i am graduating and dying to take your course and i'm only there one semesters or fill up for class more than i should. >> that is a lot of papers to grade, i can attest. we haven't spoken about creating that but i want to open it up to the audience for a question. do we have audience questions? if you give your thoughts to the microphone we would appreciate that. >> i have always believed that day memorex has to have an extraordinary memory. it seems to me from it what you described you may but i wonder when you have a gap what you do

to fill it? >> i make things up. one section of the book which is very surrealistic to me in a way was describing what i call in the book a loss told, the black hole of my childhood spent in all this time in a hospital. i actually literally remembered always picking machines, being very aware of windows. not getting out of locked doors. nurses and paper cups, beds emptying, certain smells. i would have had two paragraphs worth of material. but as soon as i overlay it with what i imagine or try to imagine i was feeling at the time the narrative opens up into

discussions of what those things mean or do to you. it is almost like intense self psychoanalysis. i have no idea -- that hospital in connecticut -- i have no idea what they really look like but i have a mental inward image of what they look like. so it is a combination of subjective with what you know of the facts. that is the best way i can put it. there's a little novelistic hanky-panky going on but it is hard work, believe me. >> howard did your family and the other cubans you knew react when fidel castro came to new york city in 1960 and stayed in a hotel in harlem and address the united nations? >> you read a little bit about that. >> thank you for that question.

he was a big hero for many cubans until he overtly came out with communism and all that. my father for example. the magazine to raise money for the revolution. i recall my father met him or was among a crowd when he came to columbia university campus. i don't recall having a sense of my family's response to him at the hotel although local neighborhood kids thought it was rather funny. some went down there. i am trying to remember if i did go down there to check out. i might have but a lot of time has gone by. if your question was how we felt

politically, ultimately -- had anyone known that was at the beginning of a long estrangement, i don't know how anyone could have stayed same. >> you talk a little bit about the divide between your family that came out before castro took power and goes relatives who came after. the peculiar advantage of being in that class. they went to new jersey and were able to buy a house and a car. >> my mother used to -- my mother and father are always helping relatives and friends come out with whatever they could. always seemed whenever we were in a state, and ok apartment,

not bad. getting along, no locations. we never went to restaurants or movies or broadway show until i went by myself. once with nuns and i remember when it came to new york city, shown in carnegie hall. >> something of a men would enjoy? >> i don't know what they enjoy but they do. my point is quite frankly the united states government really helped the exile community when they came to the country and there are lots of things available to them in terms of getting people on their feet, a lot of cubans took advantage of and rightfully so, my family did not have that advantage. there's also a have to do that my relatives experienced and there's something to be said

about a coherent and tight community. i remember miami before the cubans came in and it was a sleepy town. you go down now and it is quite different. >> in union city which your relatives moved in. next question please. >> my name is john kelly. i am a writer for the boston phoenix. thanks for being here today. >> thank you for coming. >> i have a two part question. the first is i was curious what impact the reception of "the mambo kings play songs of love" had on your life. >> there is a great movie, a great scene in a very bad movie, it features michael caine coming back from a divorce lawyer.

he has been divorced 67 times and he gets into an elevator, and two elevators come down and is always falling madly in love with women and in one there's this beautiful willowy blonde smiling at him and in the other is a black panther kind of guy with a snarling dog and michael caine gets in the elevator with the black panther guy. had i known - spend your time.

>>-and being published in different parts of the world exhilarating. but in retrospect i would have done something different but i don't want to go into that now.

>> you have to read the book "thoughts without cigarettes". >> the second question was when you are writing fiction or the memoir, how do you decide how to protect people in your life? in other words sometimes people are offended if you include them in your book or a character is an amalgamation -- >> we touched a little bit on that. >> i don't have anyone in the book who i think and kindly of. i hope that comes for. sometimes it is a little raw but i did my best. if someone happens to be offended by a certain something, i don't know. >> that is very clear. that does come through in this

book. it only hit the stand two days ago but if you get to read this book and i hope you do, it is a touching book about someone coming to terms with an upbringing was a surge in the set of circumstances. and really making choices that reform a life. would you say that? >> if you want me to, yes. >> we're all in agreement. you make it so easy. so tell us about that. you are a different animal from the rest of your family. >> i have a creative brother. my mother was quite creative. she wrote wonderful poetry and i include -- she is really a marvel. i think the message, when i was in school i was always getting

in trouble in grammar school because i was always making wise remarks. >> hard to believe. >> basically i think one of -- transcendent things one can find in life or find survival through is creativity. some form. in my case thank god i could transform some very hard emotions and some unfortunate things that happened and stuff that could make some people hopefully happy. >> very quickly, why the title "thoughts without cigarettes"? >> at the time -- there's such a history to "thoughts without cigarettes". are live in a place in manhattan where donald trump has been putting up all these very boxy buildings and construction was driving me nuts and are bought a pack of cigarettes one day because it made me feel great.

then i realized whenever i smoked and liked it i tended to be very anxious in that period. so i started smoking in england. so i realize there's something going on here. "thoughts without cigarettes". maybe you can use that as an idea to talk about different periods of life and cigarettes came in and out and so forth. i started this book, i wrote it without smoking but occasionally "thoughts without cigarettes" is an ironic title now. you come out with stress and or that. >> a very interesting title. certainly one that i hope everyone remembers and let us all thank oscar hijuelos for wonderful afternoon. >> thank you. [applause]

>> thank you for attending today's discussion and supporting the chicago tribune commitment to literacy. a book signing will take place in the arts room. please exit the room unless you have a ticket for the next program. have a good day. [inaudible conversations] >> oscar hijuelos talking about his memoir "thoughts without cigarettes". we will be back in a couple of minutes live from the 2011 chicago tribune literary festival. >> a doctor. that is what this is. somebody said as many hours of boredom, you hang around and the

word eccentric means to stand by. that is what it means. to stand by. you are waiting for a patient to deliver and it is erupted by six minutes of total chaos. i became what my mother and father wanted me to be. i have the brass ring. i am dr. thorne. but the title of this new book something to prove is another reason why even though the playing field was leveled, i looked at the brass ring and saw that there was another one that i had to climb and that was racism and sexism and male chauvinism. you can wine or you can do what you're trained to do. when our was working at a hospital in new jersey are was minding my own business walking through labor and delivery and a woman came out screaming you need to come in! it is not my patient. i don't know what is going on.

there was another obstetrician who was in trouble. the baby's head was down but not coming and the heart rate was going down. the obstetrician said get somebody. i need some help. get anybody so the nurse came out and dragged me in and i came into the delivery room and the obstetrician looked at me and said what is she going to do? all he saw was all black woman. he did not know that i was a double board certified specialist. i asked the nurse may i have forceps with an extraction handle? she gave it to me and i asked him to excuse me, may i sit down? i applaud the forceps and we delivered the baby. my job was done. i got up and left the delivery room and the only person following me to thank me was the husband of the wife. not the obstetrician but the husband. that is what i am saying. you don't expect to be loved or

to be part of the in crowd and i am a woman of color and something to prove is always something to prove and when you are a woman in a dominated mail profession you always have something to prove. life is life. i happen to be black but you could be from the wrong country or the wrong school you could be short, fat, greek but if you are not welcome what do you do about it? you always have something to prove. i am a woman. i am a mother and the wife. with me there is another layer of responsibility. we have powerful women today. we have a surgeon general. that is a woman. we have a supreme court justice that are women. condoleezza rice, secretary of state. in my situation there was another level of obligation and respond ability and that is having kids. what do you do? at the same hospital i delivered five in the afternoon and ripping off my clothes and have to get back home. what are we going to have for

dinner? a male colleague was in the doctor's lounge just relaxing. i said it is 5:30. i have to get home. i will sit here for a few hours. i will come down around 8:00. i said that is not me. i am racing down trying to get home. one is for dinner and did i get sneakers for my son and that is the difference between being a woman professional, our society expects us to be moms but i wanted to be an obstetrician. my mother would always say no or amount of success in your profession can ever make up for being a failure at home. many of my colleagues were wealthy and may have children on drugs or suicide or emotional disturbances but whenever i had to do and decisions i had to make had incorporate my children. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org.

>> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> i am reading moonwalking about memory and people who have extraordinary -- there's also a new book out called the history of espn which was published and looking forward to reading it. i am a sports fan myself. when it comes to others, columnists for the times, interesting insight. quite a few things come out. >> visit booktv.org to see this and other summer reading list. >> i ended that way because children's stories, your stories

are so valuable and i want to hear them. i want to listen to you and to what you need because that will make me a better person. you are powerful because when your parents and the people who love you do good things, what they do it for. you. that makes you very powerful. you inspire us. to greater heights. make us be better and wiser. so this book is about a couple of things. one is that we have to remember that we are connected to one another in this country and this community and this world. we are connected to one another and what happens far away matters to you. or it should.

and we should be able to feel love and to understand people who are different from us and who are very far away even. and another thing i want you to remember is that you are what? powerful. yes. that means you can begin thinking about how to make others feel better. how are to make the word matter your word. be careful with your words. how are to make the world a little more kind, a little more gentle, be sweet in your interaction and also it is about thinking about those who came before us, people who perhaps passed on.

but please know that you are loved by them. their love comes and finds do. i want to make room for your questions and i have by the way some things here, nice to see you. thank you all so much for coming. does anyone have any questions? >> why did you want to write the book? >> that is a very good question. i wanted to write the book

because i lost my mommy when i was 25 and although i was a grown-up and still needed her and i missed her, i wanted when i became a mommy myself to share with my daughters and the president's daughters some thoughts about who she was and what she was like because i knew she would have loved to meet them and to know them and she would have given them so much. and made them feel so strong. that is one of the reasons i bought the book. i wrote the book. thank you. i also wrote the book because i am a teacher. i am and educator and one of the

things that i want to happen is for us to think about world from more than one point of view. you see in the beginning, d. g. more alice who wrote the illustrations, this is the moon from the earth's point of view, right? look at the back. has it changed? what is it now? [talking over each other] >> the earth from the men's point of view. sometimes we need to flip it. we need to make sure we see things from more than one point of view. because we can the understand things in the world if we are only looking from one point of view. you know what i get my students to do sometimes? you guys know about some current events that are happening in the world. you